I was watching Ready, Steady, Cook the other day and there was a woman on it who had no sense of smell, and I got round to thinking about losing one of your senses (or more… random trivia: Stevie Wonder is not only blind, but also cannot smell), and I wondered whether you’d rather be blind or deaf? I’m never sure. I don’t think I could stand to never hear music, but then again I would hate to never see the things that I love.
Being blind must be crap. My mum likes to be friends with people that make her look open-minded - gay people, terrorists (no, not really), people with no legs, stuff like that. So in the way that only my mother would, she went out to lunch with two blind people the other day and was obviously quite pleased with herself. Anyway, a tangent there. One of them went blind at about age 15, I think. The other one was blind from birth. The one who went blind when she was 15 was saying how she was glad it didn’t happen at birth (rather harshly, considering the other woman was there) because whilst a blind person can tell what a face or something looks like from touch, you can never see a really beautiful view or something like that. Personally I really like nice houses, and if you’re blind and always have been, you never really know what a house looks like.
Gosh, I am rambling. Anyway, so that’s just what I was wondering. Would you rather be blind or deaf? I hope this doesn’t come across as insensitive, and I know that most people who are one or the other are no less happy than people who can hear and see, but I just wondered.
thats really hard decision to make, you can live a normal life with out either, but it depends on what you want to enjoy more, sound or vision, i’d perfer to be blind, i think i could live without seeing but i love noises, plus i’d know what thing look like from memory
wellll…humans’ve learnt to rely more on their sight than on any other sense (i know this from blue peter or a christmas lecture or some such thing), so in theory being blind would make life more difficult.
i would say deaf, because a) it’d be quite fab because you wouldn’t get annoying noises like…trance. and b)most things that please me are visual.
on the other hand, if you were deaf then you wouldn’t be able to speak either. which would be annoying. hmmm…
what i want to know is why we haven’t worked out how to record smells yet? this sounds horribly naive of me, but you can record temparatures, sounds, sights, etc etc … why can’t you record smells? hmm…
anyway, i don’t know which i’d rather be. deaf i think. i reckon life’d be easier deaf than blind.
you can record smells, i saw it on tomorrows world a few months ago. they had these robots that track smells from down wind and ‘hunt’ towards the source. i think it works in a similar fashion to a Gieger counter.
For some bizarre reason I know the answer to this question! We detect smells from the shape of molecules/atoms and therefore it is impossible to record smells because the actual molecule needs to be present. We could only transfer smells by transferring the molecules or if replicas of the atoms were present.
I suppose that’s the thing. A smell is actually just little molecules of the thing you are smelling floating around in your nose (which is why things generally smell more when they’re hot, coz the molecules get energy and whizz around – heh, aren’t I the budding physicist). I spose one day, with technology, there might be some sort of device that could replicate the molecules themselves, but I can’t imagine it happenining any time soon.
Interesting trivia: (yes, I’m a regular encyclopedia): Studies have shown that smell is the sensation that arouses the most significant memories, far beyond any sound or sight. Hm.
i think we cant really record any of our sensations. the effect of a certain smell is entirely subjective just as we can never be sure that a violin sounds the same to me as it does to you or that red looks the same to all people. (yes this has been said before, no i am not claiming to have an ounce of original thought) the only thing we can record is the factor that we think causes these sensations (molecule shape, vibrations in the air and patterns of electromagnetic waves if my gcse physics is anything to go by!!)
but d’you reckon it could be done with the brain? as in, a contraption attached to your brain (or inside it or something) which meant that when you pressed a button, your brain stored whatever it was smelling at that time. and you could therefore go back and smell anything you’d ever smelt. fab.
anyone can remember a smell in the same way that you can remember a view, or you can take a picture and then not have to rely on somewhat patchy memories. so it’d be like taking a photo of a smell.
but what if you remembered the smell of something really rough? could you go back and delete smells that you didn’t like?
anyway…deaf, clearly. yeah, you can’t talk, but you can still read, write and communicate in other ways. also…imagine never seeing the people you love.
so, which is worse? being blind from birth or going blind? i think the latter, because, in the harshly true words of Westlife, you can’t lose what you never had.
as a musician i am going to be rather predictable and say i would rather lose my sight than my hearing, if i had to lose one.
obviously i would rather lose neither, and if i do lose one it is unlikely to be through choice.
to me sight is not as important as sound. im not saying it isnt important… i do value my sight and i would miss it greatly, but i would miss hearing more. what would be the point in playing an instrument if you cannot hear it?
then again evelyn glennie manages. amasing, but i think it would upset me too much to not be able to hear music. i am more comforted by people’s voices and presence rather than being able to see them, i need music to feel complete… i would not be complete without my hearing, but i think eventually i would be able to be complete again without my sight. it would take alot of work though and i hope i never have to test out my opinion at this point.
i might feel completely differently if i actually had to face losing one or the other.
I would rather be deaf. I’m a visual person, and I love to write. I rather be in front of a keyboard typing some poetry than almost anything else. I like to read, and I’m not sure if brail would be the same.
I would rather be blind. And that’s a tough call because I’m a visual artist. However, I love music. I love the way a persons voice sounds when they are being nice. We rely very heavily on our sense of sight and I think it causes a lot of unfair bias in the world.
If I were blind, I think I’d concentrate on making music and just get better at that.
I too, think if I ever go blind I’ll be playing my electronic organ (Elka E49) all day long. Now I haven’t got the mood to play it longer than an hour or so… One got to have something to go for in life or one dies away prematurely. jjj
in the same way that you can remember a view, or you can take a picture and then not have to rely on somewhat patchy memories. so it’d be like taking a photo of a smell.
jjj